Welcome home
by Radiolina936
Summary: "The only thing that gave him some relief was feeling Sam's thumbs press into the skin beneath his lungs one last time. You've always been my home, Sammy."


**Title: **Welcome home  
**Characters:** Dean, Sam  
**Genre:** Romance  
**Rating:** T  
**Notes**: I wrote this story basing on the song "Welcome home" by Radical Face. It's a beautiful song and it always gives me so many Dean feels.  
Hope you'll like my story!

* * *

_**Welcome home**_

_Sleep don't visit, so I choke on sun_  
_And the days blur into one_  
_And the backs of my eyes hum with things I've never done_

The memories Dean had of his childhood all blurred into a sleepy afternoon he spent in the lawn of his old house in Lawrence. Other memories filled his mind, but he was never sure that what he remembered really happened. It was something that made the back of his eyes hum, so he closed them and didn't think about that.

In that memory he was four years old and his mother - as always - had tried to put him to bed for a nap, resultless. So she allowed him to lay on the little hammock tied on the two trees of the garden and swing up and down. The sleep didn't visit, so Dean stared at the sky, opened his mouth and tried to eat the sun.

Sam began to cry, first with sobs, then in a loud and heartbreaking cry. Mary rocked him, gently patting him on the back to make him stop. Dean got off the hammock and run to the porch. Sam was little and pink and his eyes were closed in two slits because of the cries.

"Sammy," Dean whispered, placing his little hand on his brother's head. Sam kept crying.

"Hey, Sam." His voice was soft. He started to sing Hey Jude like Mary did to him to make him sleep.

Sam stopped crying, gurgling. His mouth opened and so did his eyes. Their colour was indefinite, something between hazel and blue, and stared at that blond kid that touched his little head. They had known each other for only a couple of weeks but they already created a bond.

Mary smiled, kissing her children's foreheads.

Dean finished to sing and smiled. "Welcome home, Sammy."

_Sheets are swaying from an old clothesline_  
_Like a row of captured ghosts over old dead grass_  
_Was never much but we made the most_  
_Welcome home_

Sam and Dean once went back to Lawrence. They chanced near the town for one of their hunts, and Dean couldn't help but turn the Impala toward their hometown and drive for tens of miles, pretending his heart wasn't beating fast while thinking he'd see his old house.

Sit on the car hood, he couldn't believe how that house had changed, but still remained the same. A new family lived there, but the clothesline looked like the one Mary used, so that for a moment Dean forgot that his mother was dead, his dad was missing and Sam had left Stanford to go hunting with him.

But the sheets that were swaying weren't full of happiness like the ones Dean used to hide when he was a child, while his mother chased him laughing; the grass wasn't green and soft like the one his little feet walked on. Now the sheets looked like ghosts and the grass was dry. Dead.

"You were too little to remember," he told Sam, sticking his hands into his jeans as he could find the right words into the pockets, "but those were good days. It was never much, but we made the most."

He stared at the house, looking at the past they both had had and that would have never come back. Another family lived in that house. Other lives were hanging memories on those walls.

"Welcome home, Sammy," Dean muttered. His ironic tone was full of sadness, while it was pending in the hair before flying towards the hose. Then Dean turned towards the car, turning his back on his past.

_Ships are launching from my chest_  
_Some have names but most do not_  
_If you find one, please let me know what piece I've lost_

Dean lost many pieces of himself while he spent years and years in Hell and, from the moment he crawled out of his grave, he tried to put them together. He separated like ships launching from the main ship to go on a mission, and - as spaceships from TV shows had names - the pieces of his soul had names too.

He collected the first pieces - the little ones - while walking along the road made of dirt that lead him to that abandoned gas station. They were there, on the edge of the street, staring at him while reality made him lungs inflate, and he realized that he was alive and his body was intact. He was breathing, his heart was pumping, his legs were moving. While he was eating and drinking in the abandoned store, other pieces joined him: hunger and thirst had been unknown to him in the previous forty years and now they were sticking to him like magnets.

Dean collected the first big piece on the threshold of the only house he ever called home. Bobby stared at him, believing it was an illusion. Dean saw that piece of himself almost crash when Bobby took the knife, but it reconstructed when he recognized him and it fitted in his soul like the piece of a puzzle.

Dean found the biggest piece in a motel room with an heart on the door. It was there, in his brother's hands, and Dean saw it trembling to go back in his soul.

"Hey, Sammy," Dean said, but what he thought was different. In that moment, staring at his brother's face after forty years being tortured, the only thing he was thinking was that he was complete at last.

_I've come home, Sammy._

_Heal the scars from off my back_  
_I don't need them anymore_  
_You can throw them out or keep them in your mason jars_  
_I've come home_

From the moment he showed up at Lisa's door after losing his brother, Dean felt like, day by day, wounds appeared on his back. The new cuts added to the ones he accumulated over time, so that - a year after his brother died - his skin was completely covered in wounds. He tried with all his strength to wash away his own blood from his spine, but the more he thought about Sam, the more his heart pumped and the more blood came out of the wounds. It seemed that the Lisa's wise hands could clean his wounds, but Dean knew that the relief was only temporary.

Then Sam appeared. He was alive, and he always had been. Dean spent a year thinking he was dead and having nightmares, and it was all useless. The blood started to flow more copiously than before, while Dean's heart pumped because of the betrayal. Then the relief of seeing Sam made his heart slow down and the blood finally stopped.

_Sam, heal my scars,_ Dean wanted to say. His eyes hurt for the tears.

_Please, heal them._ _I don't need them anymore_ his thoughts muttered, while he hugged the brother he regained.

_You can throw them out or keep them in your mason jars. _He felt Sam's hands on his back. He felt that those hands could have ripped the pain from his blades once for all.

_You made me come home, Sammy._

_All my nightmares escaped my head_  
_Bar the door, please don't let them in_  
_You were never supposed to leave_  
_Now my head's splitting at the seams_  
_And I don't know if I can_

One day Dean realized that his worst nightmares, the ones that had tormented him for years, escaped from his head and became true. In the past few years he saw the events happen gradually and he didn't realized the gravity of the situation, until one day he woke up and saw the world with new eyes.

The Croatoan raged and Dean couldn't even remember how the epidemic had started.

Cas was human and Dean didn't remember when his grace began to fade away until one day it completely disappeared.

But the thing that took his breath away was that he couldn't see the moment when Sam - his brother - began to doubt himself. The moment when the pale idea of saying "yes" to Lucifer elbowed its way through his mind, and reached such proportions that he couldn't sleep at night.

He couldn't remember when Sam really needed his big brother.

Dean got up the bed and started to breath heavily, while his heart beat irregularly. Cas heard the anxiety going in and out Dean's lungs and woke up. He found him sitting on the floor with his head in his hands.

"Dean!" He kneeled beside him, taking his hands and reading his soul through his tighten muscles. Dean's eyes were wide open in terror.

"Dean," he repeated, lower. "It's all right."

"Bar the door, Cas. Don't let my nightmares in." His voice was distant, his glance stared and the infinity.

Castiel didn't move, holding his hands.

_You were never supposed to leave,_ Sam. In his mind, Cas turned into Sam. Sam's hands were now holding his wrists. You should have stayed. I could have helped. "My head's splitting," he said.

Sam took Dean's head between his hands, caressing his cheeks.

"I don't know if I can do it," Dean muttered. Sam came closer and Dean put his head on his shoulder, crying.

_I don't feel home without you, Sammy._

_Here, beneath my lungs, I feel your thumbs press into my skin again_

Only when he was about to die Dean understood how much he loved his brother, despite all the fighting and the cries, the tears and the deaths. They hadn't talk to each other for five years, and the way death reunited them once again was almost ironic.

"Dean." It felt like Sam's voice was coming from far away, as if the tears rushing down his cheeks created a wall between him and his brother.

"Stay with me," he said, hoping that those words could keep Dean alive.

Dean couldn't talk, the rip on his chest took his words away. Sam touched his cheeks, to keep his head up, and his chest, to plug the wound. But Dean had already accepted his death.

The only thing that gave him some relief was feeling Sam's thumbs press into the skin beneath his lungs one last time.

_You've always been my home, Sammy._


End file.
